


and the stars in the sky don't mean nothing

by ninemoons42



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Cuddling & Snuggling, Flashbacks, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hiding, Holding Hands, Inspired By Tumblr, Inspired by Music, Team Bonding, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-23
Updated: 2014-06-23
Packaged: 2018-02-05 22:25:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1834372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky wakes up alone in the midst of a crowd (also known as the Avengers on a day off), and panics, because he can see the others touching each other in casual and friendly and affectionate ways and it's been a long time since he understood what it's like to be touched like that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and the stars in the sky don't mean nothing

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the confluence of [this Tumblr post](http://theragnarokd.tumblr.com/post/89043792489/stele3-but-i-knew-him-friendly-reminder-that) and the song "I Don't Want to Talk About It" (listen [HERE for the Rod Stewart duet with Amy Belle](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RkWs6P2IwE) or [HERE for the Everything But The Girl cover](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UujO_YwaB_I)).

He comes to with a start.

There are people around him, too much movement, too many shadows.

Voices. Louder than usual.

Bucky carefully opens his eyes to slits. Just enough to figure out what's going on, but not enough for anyone to tell that he's awake or aware. 

Slowly he turns his head.

Shuffle of a deck of cards. Pepper and - _Carol_ , his mind supplies, _Captain Marvel, not at all a person to be crossed,_ \- and Natalia. Natasha. He remembers that she calls herself that, now. He remembers that shadows cross her eyes when he calls her by the name he'd been given, in the haze of the Red Room and the stink of blood drying. Natasha is shuffling a deck of cards in one hand, and she's holding a mug in the other, and the lines in Pepper's face are fading from stress to smiles. Carol, meanwhile, is too busy rifling her pockets - and then, she laughs, and lays a pile of colorful little things atop the table they're sitting at. 

Bucky blinks, and moderates his breathing. Not coins as he'd expected. Candy. Modern things, he thinks, sweets not of his time (but when is his time?), because these candies are box-shaped and far too brightly colorful. Artificial.

Sam drops neatly into a chair a few feet away from Carol. He's nose-deep in a book - Bucky narrows his eyes some more so he can read the title. Sam is reading something called _The Book Thief_. There are dominoes on the cover, which is as dog-eared and battered as the rest of the book seems to be.

Bucky watches Sam hold a hand out to seemingly no one - and then Natasha finishes dealing out the playing cards, her hands moving so quickly that he can barely track her throwing precisely three candies at Sam.

Now there is a conversation near his feet. Bucky looks. It's Clint and Darcy, arms around each other, laughing. Hard to tell if they're laughing with or at each other. Darcy has been visiting and she's been here for three days, and Clint complains, every day, that she doesn't visit him as often as he'd like.

Bruce tiptoes through the throng, pausing to ruffle Darcy's hair - and then Natasha's and Carol's. No one protests. Pepper offers him her fist, and he bumps it with his own, and then Bruce loops back to sit next to Sam, close enough for their shoulders to brush. 

"Hey, man," Sam says, finally looking up from his book to return Bruce's fist-bump, and passes him a slim black pad of some kind. Bucky recognizes it. An e-reader. He spends enough time stealing Steve's and reading what he keeps on it. Steve has interesting taste in books. Who else would have Archie Comics listed next to Victor Hugo and something twisty and interesting called _All You Need is Kill_?

Briefly, Bucky wonders what Sam reads. What Bruce reads. If he got up and asked, politely, he would probably know.

But he won't get up. He's afraid. He doesn't want to join them. He doesn't know how to. Sam grins and laughs so easily, and Bruce wears understanding like he does the wealth of silver strands in his hair, and Bucky can't take those things - or the way they both reach out to touch other people.

Touch.

Bucky shivers and, as unobtrusively as he can, withdraws more deeply into his light blanket. Back against the couch, touching the cushions only. 

He's surrounded by people who think nothing of touching, and he's - not been touched for so many years. Hit, yes. Struck down, yes. Beaten, yes.

Physical contact to Bucky is a language of violence. Disabling someone quickly or slowly as needed. Inflicting pain. The way his metal hand moves when he bunches it into a fist, and the problem of cleaning blood and grime and everything else from the knuckles. Walking through pools of spilled anything and everything, often because he's broken the containers - organic or otherwise. 

He shudders, and keeps that shudder to himself, when his mind steers him back to the ordeals of being forced onto his back. Uncaring hands, bruising, and the bruises fading away even as his memories were lanced and lacerated away from him, leaving him blank and uncomprehending and unfeeling.

Unfeeling.

He blinks and forces himself back to his surroundings. Escape. Escape. He has to get away from the dreams or he'll start screaming. This is no place to scream. That, at least, is something he understands. There are no enemies here. There are too many sympathetic faces here.

Tony's voice. "Who said you were allowed to eat Starbursts in here, Romanova, they're not even candy, and I say that as a connoisseur of candy."

"I like them, Tony, I keep a stash of them in my handbag too - you have no idea how often I use them to keep awake during meetings," Pepper says, as she tips her head back. Tony kisses her on her forehead. Her eyes never leave her cards. "Check," she says, looking in Carol's direction.

Carol laughs, flicks her fingers at Natasha, and eventually tosses a few more candies - Starbursts - into the center of the table.

A man in a suit walks over to Clint and Darcy, and Clint slides his free arm around that man's waist without breaking stride. He seems to be telling Darcy a story. 

In return, the man in the suit ghosts a kiss against Clint's temple and loosens his tie. "Please don't tell me," Phil Coulson says in a voice that seems to be hiding several kinds of amusement, "that the two of you are planning to take over the world. Again. I mean, we just finished cleaning up after the last time. Darcy, you owe FitzSimmons."

Darcy laughs and reaches around Clint to pat Coulson's shoulder. "Yes. I will send them some of those chocolates that they like so much. Also, I'm not telling you anything. And no, don't call Jane, she's innocent, and besides, good luck getting a coherent sentence out of her."

"Yeah, she tends to lose her words every time she comes back from Asgard," Clint says. 

"Or is it every time she comes back from a weekend with Thor, which is pretty much the same thing?"

"Stop, stop, too much information," several voices say.

Bucky feels like he needs to say that, too. People all around, people touching each other: things he can't understand. Things that are confusing to him. Why is he here? Why does he stay? Why does he want to stay? Who are these people? What do they see when they see him, when they see his arm, when he uses his arm?

Too many questions. No answers in sight. They look at him with something he can't read, can't understand, for all he knows how to speak most European languages and a fair amount of everything else. They reach out for him. He doesn't know how to fist-bump anyone. He can't sit down to cards. He can't share space with - with people.

Sometimes he still wants to run from Steve. 

Where is Steve? And where does Bucky want to be? Does he want to be near Steve or far away from him?

He can't think.

He gets up, then, and he wraps his blanket around himself. Hunches his shoulders. 

He looks around the room, once. 

Everyone is looking at him.

Natasha has a hand held out in his direction.

No, no, he can't - he doesn't know how - 

Bucky closes his eyes, and runs, and he hears everyone else breathing and that's the only way he manages to avoid them all. Half a crouch, half a run - he makes it to the elevator, and when the doors close on him, close on someone calling his name, it's all he can do to avoid falling in on himself. Collapsing. Something pricks at his eyes. 

Who had been calling after him? He doesn't know. He heard his name. He doesn't know who it was.

The elevator stops. He stumbles out, blind and wavering.

Runs straight into - something. 

A breath that isn't his own. Not something that panics, that is high and thin and whistling with fear. Not him.

Someone _else_.

Who?

Arms around him. Steady, warm, yielding - when he pushes away, when he pulls back, the arms let him go. The warmth follows him. Not too close that he can't breathe. Not too far that he's left back in the glacial cold.

"Bucky?"

That's where he is.

Steve, behind him. With him. Bucky reaches out for him. His eyes are still closed. He can hear where Steve is. It lets him turn, lets Steve catch his hand. 

Steve has warm hands. Two hands wrapped around his. Fingertips ring against metal.

Steve is holding Bucky's left hand as though it were warm and vital and alive and part of him.

Bucky shakes his head. Opens his eyes. Tries to take that hand back. Shouldn't Steve want to hold his flesh hand?

"No, don't let go," Steve says. Steve is two arm lengths away: his own, and Bucky's. He doesn't come closer.

And suddenly, Bucky knows: Steve won't come closer. The distance is not his to close.

Only Bucky can choose. Only Bucky can make that move. 

He does. One step closer, toward Steve and his warmth.

Steve says nothing. His smile never changes, never even falters. 

Bucky takes another step closer.

Steve nods, and says, "Do you want to talk about it?"

Bucky makes himself answer. "About what?"

"About you," Steve says, simply.

That's only the most complicated subject Bucky knows.

The words come, halting, shaky. "I was upstairs. Common floor. Is that what it's called?"

Steve shrugs. "Tony thinks it must be his living room. Or that's where he looks for people to bother."

Bucky nods, swallows, continues. "That. There were people. Talking. In the same spaces. I liked it, but then everyone was there and then - it was too much."

He hears the voice say the last few words with him, unexpected, and it takes Bucky a moment to understand that that voice belongs to Steve. Even longer to say, "You. You too? Why."

Now the smile changes. It frosts over at the edges. It looks bittersweet. 

Bucky can't help himself. He steps forward, once. Touches a free fingertip to the creases between Steve's eyebrows. 

"Me," Steve says. "I - wasn't exactly in a place like the one you were in. But I was alone, too, for a long time. There was the ice, and there was the time after the ice, when they thought I was okay walking out on the streets again. Sometimes I kind of miss that kind of alone. Just me."

Bucky stares. Tries to withdraw, because he understands.

"Not you," Steve says. "I want to be near you, whenever you'll have me, whenever you're comfortable." He moves the hands that are holding on to Bucky, up and down, gently. A firm squeeze, pressure on Bucky's fingers, and - Steve lets go.

Bucky makes a sound and reaches for him again. "No," he says. "Stay."

"I will. Can I come closer?"

Bucky's afraid of other people in general, and sometimes the other members of the team in particular. Sometimes they're too much for him. Too overwhelming.

Not Steve.

Bucky closes the distance.

Again, Steve's arms around him.

Bucky puts his arms around Steve, as well.

A new old memory.

He takes it in, as though he's never been held before.

He takes it in, as he used to, when they would hold on to each other through shivering and fevers and gnawing hunger and - everything.

"We used to do this," he says, softly, into Steve's skin.

"Yes," is Steve's reply.

"Can I - can we - " How to ask? "Is this something we can do?" 

He feels Steve nod. Warm words. "Yes, but. Bucky."

"Steve."

"I can't guess when you need this. You - this is something you have to tell me. You have to ask."

Bucky nods. It makes sense. "Yeah. Okay." He takes a deep breath. "I'll ask. I'm asking now."

"Okay, Buck. I'm here."

(It's Steve who asks the next question, eventually: "Sleep?"

Bucky pulls away.

"No, please don't - will you stay? Even when I sleep?" 

"Okay," Bucky says, and holds on as tightly as he dares.)

**Author's Note:**

> I am also on [tumblr](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/).


End file.
